


Sick Day

by wandererinthefourthdimension



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25800154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandererinthefourthdimension/pseuds/wandererinthefourthdimension
Summary: The Doctor falls ill with an alien flu, but stubbornly refuses to acknowledge his sickness. Martha tries not to lose her patience. Post-Blink.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Martha Jones
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from fanfiction.net. I wrote this a few years ago, but I still quite liked the story so I gave it some significant edits and decided to upload it here as well. Let me know what you think!

It was one of the few absolute certainties of life on the TARDIS: there was no such thing as sleeping in.

No matter how taxing and turbulent the chaos of yesterday, no matter what injury or personal loss had been sustained, no matter what tragic injustices had come to pass, there was still no reprieve. The wake-up call was inescapable. It was universal fact and scientific law. Every day, after six meticulously allotted hours of sleep – allotted with precision down to the nanosecond, of course – a pinstriped hurricane came down upon her bedroom. Usually with winds no less than three-hundred miles an hour.

If by some miracle the aggravating gale-force bellow of “ _Rise and shine, Martha Jones!_ ” failed to rouse her (which to date it never had, given that the hideously cheerful shout had approximately the same shock value as the unforeseen impact of a missile), other measures were employed. Lights were flicked on. Bedsheets were dragged off. There was impatient sighing, pacing, and prodding to contend with – and, naturally, a brisk hailstorm of insults on the crude inadequacy of the human sleep cycle – until she finally obliged the hurricane by lugging herself out from the warmth of the sheets and glaring into the full brunt of that stupidly gorgeous smile it always wore in the mornings. Upon the first death threat she issued, that was when it decided to march her off to breakfast in the galley and – with a calibre of enthusiasm frankly indecent at such an ungodly hour – bombard her with all its eager ideas for their day’s adventure. Ordinarily she could fend the hurricane off long enough to squeeze in a shower and a new set of clothes. But before her hair had fully dried, it would be back in her personal space, grumbling about how much time she wasted getting ready and reminding her that the universe was waiting.

The tumultuous nature of their travels meant a whirlwind of constant motion. The tumultuous nature of the Doctor meant that any respite from this whirlwind was excruciatingly brief.

So when Martha Jones stirred into consciousness feeling suspiciously well-rested, and was not greeted with the typical commotion – nor the sight of a tall, ominously Doctor-shaped shadow falling over her bed – it was a cause for immediate concern.

She abruptly sat upright in bed, wearing a frown. Her bedroom was dark. Not only was it dark: it was empty and quiet and utterly undisturbed. Mild panic was quick to flare to life, and her gaze swivelled around the room. “Doctor?”

Nothing.

Something was wrong.

She kicked free of the tangles of her sheets and climbed from her bed, hurrying barefoot out into the corridor. The wall lights – set to mimic a 24-hour Earth day – had almost achieved full brightness, bathing the rounded coral passageway in light, glowing with a soft yellow orange. Figuratively speaking, it must have been around eleven. Thus even if he had for some reason neglected to wake her, she should’ve still been able to hear him up and about in other parts of the ship. Whether it was rambling idly to himself, or admonishing the TARDIS for its latest act of brazen insubordination, or belting out a shameless and egregiously off-key rendition of _Bohemian Rhapsody_ under the console – he was physically incapable of lasting five minutes without making noise.

Yet all was silent.

Preparing herself for the worst, she started down the corridor towards the console room. But she’d made it less than ten steps away from her bedroom when the low and indistinct sound of someone coughing suddenly cut through the silence.

She froze, startled, and turned to stare in puzzlement at the door closest to her left. The nondescript metal door looked back at her, the embodiment of cool, docile, inanimate innocence.

Martha frowned, not falling for its guise, and moved closer to listen. There was silence for five seconds, ten; then came more coughing.

A throat was painstakingly cleared.

She gave the door a quick rap of her knuckles, unwilling to open the door without express permission. “Hello?” she called softly, hoping she wouldn’t startle him. “Doctor?”

In lieu of an answer, the terrible sound of gagging erupted from inside the room.

Her response was instinctive. Discretion forgotten, Martha reached forward and hit the electronic panel beside the door without a second thought. It wasn’t locked, and with a muted clicking and clanking of cogs it glided back into the wall.

The warm corals of the corridor abruptly gave way into gloom-steeped bedroom. It was dusty and Spartan, filled with dark, dour mahogany and not much else. Clutter littered the perimeter of the space – a rickety desk suffocating beneath spare parts, an overstuffed bookcase sagging under the weight of a thousand scuffed paperbacks, a pile of dirty clothes kicked halfway into a shadowy cupboard. But the only clear focus of the room was in its centre: where solemnly, sturdily, like something plucked out of a history museum, loomed one large and disastrously messy four-poster bed.

A large and disastrously messy four-poster bed which, in the centre of its gnarled sheets, held one very pale, very miserable-looking Time Lord.

Suddenly, things made a lot more sense.

The Doctor was in pyjamas, sitting with his head buried in a bin. This image on its face was transparently wrong on several levels – so off-putting that it made Martha freeze in the doorway for a few seconds, processing the oddness of it. As she hesitated, trying to acclimatise to the sight of one of the universe’s most formidable and august minds sitting in his bed in pastel striped jammies that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a seven-year-old’s wardrobe, she slowly became aware of the bitter scent tinging the air. That awareness led her to finally pick up on the noises echoing hollowly from the inside of the plastic bin he clutched, all which seemed to be noises of the retching, splattering, suffering variety.

The auditory upheaval sharply reminded her why she’d even intruded in the first place, and it was the motivation she required to cross the threshold. The door made a big, noisy show of clicking and clanking itself shut behind her as Martha went to the foot of his bed. There was a brief awkward second as she stood there unnoticed, her own stomach churning in empathy; then the heaving intensified, and she worked up the mettle to move to his side. She navigated a suspicion stain darkening the carpet with a wrinkled nose and tentatively perched herself up on the edge of the high mattress beside him.

It was somewhat disorientating to be in such a private space of his, but after a moment, sympathy overcame indecision. She risked extending a cautious hand to pat his back. Feverish heat bled generously through the thin fabric against her palm, but there was no acknowledgement of her touch – just more muffled, convulsive gagging. And as many times as Martha had dreamt about being in his bed…well, this wasn’t exactly what she’d envisioned.

He dragged his face out of the bin with a groan, struggling for breath, face twisted into disgust. She could see his arms trembling as he tried to locate the floor to place the bin. The fresh contents of the wastebasket sloshed alarmingly. Martha was swift to rescue it from his hands before there was a spill, and deposited it inside the halo of balled-up, crumply tissue from where it had clearly been lifted.

An elastic creak of protest sounded from the mattress as the Doctor collapsed back into his bed. Sour-faced and spread-eagled, he moaned pitifully again, then weakly summoned the strength to drag a pillow over his head.

The twinge of sympathy Martha felt grew a bit more acute. She would’ve gone in for a hug if he hadn’t reeked of sick – but, as he very much did, she settled for giving his bicep a consoling little pat instead.

At the contact, the pillow immediately jerked downward. From underneath peered a squinting set of wild eyes. She watched his brows slowly pull together into a furrow of confusion. For a moment he said nothing, scrutinising her intensely through that bleary, sleep-reddened gaze – blinking slowly, as though trying to figure out if she were actually real or not.

When he finally reached a verdict on her corporeality, the furrow inevitably deepened.

“What are you doing?” came the muffled, groggy, rough demand.

“Checking up on you, mister,” she said lightly, shaking her head. “Although I am a bit confused, as I’m sure I distinctly remember you saying that you couldn’t catch the Anderian flu.”

He more or less just grunted at her, a response which Martha – having professional experience in being vaguely grunted at, usually whenever he was repairing something intricate under the console and couldn’t be bothered to use syllables – managed to decode as a gruff dismissal of, “I can’t.”

“Well, you obviously _can_ ,” she replied.

Having acknowledged, processed, and evidently made the decision to entirely disregard her abnormal presence in his bed, the Doctor turned his back on her and stretched himself out like a sleepy cat. One long leg ended up sprawled over her lap in the motion. “Go away,” was what the next grunt translated into.

“If you can’t get flu,” she pushed his leg off her lap and onto the bed, “how do you explain all this, then?”

A sweep of her hand encompassed his physical condition, the bin, and the stain on the floor. His head turned a fraction, one lone brown eye materialising to follow her gesture. It narrowed accordingly. “Explain what?”

She gave him a look. “You just sicked up, Doctor. You’re in bed. You look terrible.” The last observation was apparently offensive enough to spur him to lift his head fully out of the pillow and focus both eyes on her, even if it was just to scowl. “This isn’t exactly normal. Especially for you.”

“Well, it’s _nothing_ to do with the Anderians,” arrived the sharp retort. His leg stubbornly put itself back into the comfort of her lap. “Don’t be daft. I’ve got a Time Lord immune system, I don’t have… _flu_.”

The word was spat out as though it were something unspeakably vile. But without the buffer of the pillow, she could now hear that his voice had been transformed over the course of the night. It had all the trappings of illness: hoarse, croaky, and completely, adorably nasal.

It took substantial self-restraint not to laugh outright at him.

“Are you sure about that?” asked Martha, biting her lip to suppress a smile.

His foot gave a half-hearted kick, nudging her stomach. Whether the faint kick was a reflexive expression of frustration or a failed attempt to shut her up, she wasn’t certain. “Of course I’m _sure_. Besides, Anderia was what, a month ago?”

“Three days ago,” she clarified.

“Same thing.” He turned his attention to his pillow and drove his fist into it in sharp, hard jabs: either attempting to pummel it into peak fluffiness or using it as an unfortunate outlet for his irritation, Martha couldn’t tell which.

“Three days is a standard incubation period,” she pointed out. He clobbered the pillow again. “Maybe your immune system wasn’t quite as infallible as you thought.”

She could only assume that the pillow had stopped acquiescing to his wishes, as a moment later its crushed carcass went sailing through the air in a fit of pique, narrowly missing her head. “We already had this talk,” he snapped. “Primitive virus, highly superior cellular composition, Time Lord immune system. I physically cannot get flu. It’s simple biology, Martha, I _thought_ you were a medical student.”

She ignored this last barb – and she didn’t think he’d appreciate it much if she pointed out that it looked like the ‘primitive’ virus had his Time Lord immune system licked. “I remember what you said,” she replied, calm. “But the Anderians told you it was the most virulent strain of flu they’d seen in the last forty-thousand years. Strong enough to take on even your ‘superior’ immune system, they said.”

“The Anderians are _thick_ ,” he hurled venomously, and struggled to sit up. “I’m fine.”

Which perhaps would have been a rather more convincing assertion, had he not followed it by ducking his face into the crook of his elbow and bellowing out a sneeze.

She watched, unimpressed, as he collapsed back on the bed again; the exertion of sneezing depleting his energy and making him abandon his frail bid to sit upright. He looked utterly pitiful as he curled up – as best as someone that lanky could manage to curl up, anyway – and buried half his face in the sheet, groaning.

“I think you should have listened to the Anderians,” she said.

He spared her one disdainful, sullen glance of his left eye. “Well, you’re thick too.”

In another scenario she might have swatted him for the remark, but she could only give another tired sigh as she took in the cranky, huddled visage of distress that was currently the Doctor. He radiated misery: shivering faintly, the underside of his nose red and irritated, his cheeks flushed with fever. He was only in the early throes of the ten-day flu, but even now he looked awful. In his current state he’d definitely not handle any swatting too well.

“Maybe next time you’ll be reasonable and get yourself vaccinated as well,” she said gently, “instead of just me.”

“I didn’t _need_ a vaccination. You did. Human antibodies are pathetic.” He reached back and groped blindly for his pillow; then, with a frustrated sigh, seemed to remember he’d pitched it across the room and had to settle for a stray cushion. “The pollen on Eldredi 9 would kill you in six and a half seconds.”

Martha rolled her eyes. “Be that as it may, right now I’m not the sick one. You are.”

He glared at her with all the forbidding turbulence of the Oncoming Storm – though the effect was somewhat diminished by the fact that he was curled up in his bed in pastel striped pyjamas, hugging a cushion. “I’ll have you know that _Time Lords_ do not get sick.”

In the interest of not causing further injury to his dignity, she refrained from reminding him of the foul-smelling sick currently marring the carpet, and the bin, and the bottom left portion of his shirt. “All right, how about we just go to the infirmary and make sure?”

“I am not going to the infirmary.”

“Why not? Because you know you have flu, and don’t want it up on a screen so I can say ‘I told you so’?”

He sneezed explosively once more – Martha flinched and recoiled – then wilted into the rumpled bedsheets, breath shallow. “No, because I don’t need to, that’s why. Didn’t I tell you to go away?”

“First off, would it be possible for you to _cover_ your mouth when you do that?”

“No,” he said crossly.

She wiped off her wet arm with a corner of his bedsheet, grimacing. “What makes you think you don’t need to go to the infirmary?”

“I’ve better things to do.”

“Like what?” she challenged.

And she’d caught him there. “Well…” He visibly strained to think of something, mind clearly churning a bit slower than normal. “I thought we might go to…Kur-ha. Never took you there, ‘cause we got a bit side-tracked,” _side-tracked_ , of course, being his new term to encompass three months of her labouring as his maid in 1913, a period she thought he was frankly all too keen to gloss over, “but we could still go ice-skating on the mineral lakes.”

“Doctor, I’m sorry, but you don’t look like you’d make it to the console room in one piece, let alone a mineral lake.” The single-eye scowl re-emerged. “I don’t think you’re in any state to leave the TARDIS.”

“I’ll go wherever I like,” he said, and aimed another very feeble glare at her. “I don’t have flu.”

She folded her arms. He was beginning to grate on her nerves. The Doctor was unfathomably difficult at the best of times (in good health), and she’d known him long enough to know that, when reason and common sense failed, there was only one way to handle him.

“Right,” she said simply, shrugging. “Well, if there’s nothing wrong with you, you certainly don’t need me here.” Martha scooted away from him and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Kur-ha sounds good. I’ll see you in the console room?”

He scrambled to sit up, and finally managed it this time, dropping his cushion in his haste. Two overly warm, sweaty hands clutched her forearm. “Wait,” he demanded – and looked completely mad as he did so, hair sticking up wildly on the left side of his head and flattened on the right. “Wait. Martha. Don’t go.”

“You’re fine. You haven’t got flu. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because…” He glanced down and sniffled. “Well, because it’s possible that I may have…miscalculated.”

“Miscalculated what, exactly?”

“We-ell.” He hesitated on the monosyllable, attention suddenly captured by a fleck of lint on his bedsheet. “There could be a small, teensy, really quite spectacularly infinitesimal possibility that I might be…affected.”

"Affected by?"

"Uh…"

She tilted an eyebrow. "Not the Anderian flu, surely?"

"No," he insisted, forcefully. "Just…I, ah, I’m not exactly a hundred per cent. Could be anything, really. Probably old age.”

"You’re certain it's not flu, then?"

"No, no, no.” He shook his head, swiping at his nose with a shirtsleeve. “Time Lord. Can't get flu. Keep up."

Her eyes rolled once more as the peak of her exasperation neared. "Do you admit that you’re ill, at least?”

The lint intrigued him again.

"Might be,” he said noncommittally.

"‘Might?’"

"It's possible.”

At this point Martha was prepared to tell him off for being ridiculous and drag him feet-first to the infirmary; but then she saw the bourgeoning pout on his face as he slouched back down into the duvet and hugged his cushion again, and took pity on him. The pout had always had an annoying way of getting to her; and the pout in league with the shivering was an unstoppable force.

Mollified a bit, she reached forward and gently laid the back of her hand against his clammy forehead. An almost human warmth – blistering in comparison to his usual cool body temperature – met her skin. "Aw. You're burning up."

He grumbled a bit and made an unenthusiastic attempt to bat her hand away. “I’m freezing.”

“Freezing?”

The Doctor flinched, apparently realising the symptom he’d just allowed to slip. “Not _freezing_ ,” he amended hastily, firmly – as if she couldn’t see his tremors for herself. "Just…chilly. A bit. There must be something wrong with the TARDIS." A suspicious glance flicked up at her. "You haven't been mucking with the thermostat, have you?"

"I didn’t even know the TARDIS had a thermostat, so no. You definitely aren’t cold, I can tell you that. Just feels that way. Probably chills."

"I don't have chills," he declared. "And I do _not_ want you fussing over me."

Which was utterly laughable, of course. If he so much as stubbed his toe, she was promptly notified and solicited for maximum sympathy – yet, if he'd broken a finger or sustained any similar serious injury, he'd keep it from her for weeks. It was being ordered about that he hated ( _sit down, leave that alone, get off the bloody ladder, you're in no condition to be running for your life_ ) not fussing. "Oh, hush. You love it when people fuss over you."

And because he couldn't deny it without the denial sounding blatantly like a fib, he just pulled his cushion up over his face again. "I’m cold," he complained into it, as if that settled the debate.

Sighing, Martha shuffled across his bed and fetched the bunched-up duvet from where it had obviously been kicked, shaking out the tangles. He was indeed sweating, but she knew he could withstand extreme changes in internal temperature, so she wasn't too concerned about his fever; and there was no sense in him being uncomfortable. She returned to his side, and pulled the straightened-out coverlet up over him, tucking it around his shoulders.

A definite soft noise of content emanated from the pillow, and he settled into the new warmth.

"How's that?" she asked.

"Better," he reported from the safety of his cushion in a small, congested voice. "Thanks."

Because his hair was now the only thing exposed, she reached down and ruffled it affectionately – something that would earn her a solid tongue-lashing if he weren’t so out of it, but he now accepted wordlessly. She wasn’t even sure he even noticed. "Do you want me to make you a cup of tea?"

"No."

The muffled reply was quick and resolute. She tilted her head. "You must really be feeling awful. I don't think you've ever turned down tea before."

“It’s not that I don’t want it. But…” The cushion shifted minutely, revealing that his face had gone ashen, and not insignificantly green. “Something went wrong earlier.”

She frowned, worried for a moment. "What went wrong?"

He answered gravely: “The gravity."

“The…gravity?”

"When I woke up, it turned on me."

Martha schooled her features into polite concern. "The gravity turned on you?" she checked.

"Yes." The Doctor shivered and curled further into the duvet, as if warding off the grim memory. "It must have malfunctioned, but…everything started coming up."

"Oh, no. Is that what happened?" she asked, pointing to the waste bin and stained carpet, trying very hard to maintain a straight face.

"Yeah," he said bleakly, sniffling.

She gave his shoulder a squeeze. "I'll take care of that for you, all right?"

"Sorry."

"Oh, it's not your fault," she said (even though it was entirely his fault for refusing a vaccination). She moved off the bed, careful not to disturb his sheets, and put her hands on her hips as she regarded the stain on the floor. "Have you got any cleaning fluid?"

"In the loo," he sniffled. His eyes trailed over to a door on the other side of the room. "Under the sink, maybe. Haven't used it in two-hundred years."

With this direction, Martha went to the door and pulled it open. His bathroom was almost an exact replica of hers, clean lines and white tile. She checked under the sink and extracted the blue-labelled spray bottle she found. Arming herself with a roll of dusty paper towels she returned to the room. She reached for the bedside lamp and found the dial at its base set to the dimmest setting. When she turned it up, it obligingly spat out a much sunnier glow, spilling light onto the stain. She put her hands on her hips, wrinkled her nose, and assessed the puddle.

A head of tufted brown hair poked up at the brightened light, and the Doctor’s gaze followed her. "Martha?"

"Yes?" she asked, kneeling down on the floor and calculating the best way to go about scrubbing the carpet. She had cleaned up far too many stains like this in the A&E, but that had largely been on tiled floors.

"How,” he asked slowly, suddenly looking a bit puzzled by her presence, the reaction quite belated, “did you get in here?”

“I heard you coughing from the corridor.” She tipped out a small amount of cleaning fluid onto the floor, and – praying it wasn’t going to burn through the carpet, or more importantly, her palm – began to wipe up the stain with one hand, pinching her nose with the other. “Just a coincidence. I didn’t even think you had a bedroom, to be honest. Thought you were in the console room at first.”

“You really walked that far to find me?” He sounded reluctantly impressed and, maybe she was imagining it, but also slightly touched. “I…” He poked at the blanket. “I hope you weren’t lost for too long.”

She spared him a puzzled glance. “Your room is only a few doors away from mine, Doctor.”

A wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows while he processed this. “Is it?”

“Yeah.”

The touched expression faded.

“I am nine-hundred years old,” he said harshly, raising his voice. “I didn’t ask for your help and I don’t need it.”

This stung a bit more than she was expecting. It probably didn’t say good things about their relationship that she was so accustomed to having her feelings abruptly trampled she didn’t even flinch anymore. “Fine.” She lobbed the paper towels in the bin. “You can clean up your own vomit next time.”

“What?” He blinked at her, looking bewildered. “I wasn’t talking to _you_ , Martha, obviously.”

Then he rolled and turned his back on her again – muttering something vague about meddling transdimensional cows.

Frowning in momentary puzzlement, then shaking it off – figuring it had something to do with the TARDIS and she’d only confuse herself trying to understand – she stood up from the damp carpet and returned the cleaning fluid to its rightful location. She treated her hands to a thorough washing before returning to her spot beside the shivering lump of duvet.

"I've cleaned it," she said, settling on the edge of the bed.

He smothered a rattling cough into his cushion. "Thanks."

The word was stuttered, mostly because his shivers had become so pronounced that his teeth clacked every other moment. Despite the fact that he was still sweating, he somehow did a very convincing job of appearing like he was stranded in the middle of the tundra. "Do you need another blanket?"

"No. You just went away," he mumbled, and didn't sound too pleased about it. "But I'm fine now."

It took her a moment to connect the dots, but soon she realised what he was saying. Now she knew why he had clung to her arm the first time she'd threatened to leave: he'd been covertly using her body heat as a radiator.

Martha narrowed her eyes, looking down at him. He was very indiscreetly inching nearer to her. She shook her head at the irony. He wanted to be close to her – and _that_ certainly made a change from the status quo. The bitterer part of her had half a mind to get up and leave him to shiver; but she decided that this was not the time to be resentful over unrequited feelings.

Since she'd left, he had made a frail attempt to prop himself up halfway in his bed, and she scooted close. Her elbow bumped against his bicep, hip brushing hip.

He stopped inching, and gave what was definitely hum of approval as he released his cushion.

She briefly wished he was a bit less endearing, so she could be fully annoyed with him. At least he seemed to be shivering less dramatically now that she was so close (now that he could leech her heat properly, a cynical little voice muttered in the back of her mind).

"Okay," she prompted. "So, we've established that tea's out."

His eyes fluttered up to focus up on her. "Until the gravity stabilises."

"How about some water?" she suggested. "That seems safe enough."

"No."

"Why not water?"

She saw his Adam’s apple bob in a reflexive gulp. "Wouldn't want to…tempt it.”

Martha raised an eyebrow. "I'm not exactly sure how you can tempt gravity, but you're going to have to drink something soon. You need to replenish your fluids."

He frowned up at her. “Don’t fuss. I know. I will. Not now."

"What do you plan to do now?"

There was a pause.

"I'm a bit tired," he confessed, voice sheepish, picking at a loose thread on his blanket.

“Well,” she gave his arm a pat, “you get your rest, then. I’ll go and entertain myself in the library, all right? You can shout if you need me.”

But before she could even begin to get up, his hands were clutching at her elbow once more.

"Martha, I thought you said you wouldn't go."

She frowned. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You _said_ ,” he repeated slowly, giving her a look that suggested he thought she was being especially dense, “that you wouldn’t go.”

“What? Are you saying that you want me to sit here and…?” She shook her head in bewilderment. “You want me to _watch_ you sleep?”

The Doctor didn’t seem at all bothered by this notion. "You don't have to watch," he offered. "You can sleep, too. Humans love sleep."

"I'm not tired, and–"

"You look tired.”

Anderian flu or no Anderian flu, that earned him a solid swat on his arm.

"Ow," he bleated.

"– and there's no _bloody_ way I'm going to sleep with you."

Heat rushed to her cheeks as she processed the sentence. He didn't seem to notice her sudden flush or the double entendre. "What's wrong with me?" he squawked instead.

She shifted away from him, putting a nice safe two inches between them as she tried to force away her blush. "You're infected."

"You're vaccinated!" he protested, following her and eradicating her two inches of distance.

She scooted once more. This time it was three inches, and a warning glare. "Vaccinations aren't fool-proof, Doctor. Just because you've got the bubonic plague vaccine doesn't mean you go and cuddle flea-ridden rats."

"I don't have the bubonic plague," he complained. "And I'm not a rat."

"And I'm _not_ going to be cuddling you."

"I didn't say we should cuddle." Then he seemed to consider it. "But if you're…"

"No, I'm not offering," she cut him off, narrowing her eyes, "and don't you _dare_ ask."

"But I don't have fleas!"

"You love reminding me how weak and feeble my immune system is, don't you? I'm not going to lie here and inhale your germs!"

"Martha…"

"No," she said firmly, and emphasised her point with another inch of space. "No way."

"I'm cold." He reached out again and grabbed her wrist this time. "Don't leave."

"If you’re that cold, I can go and get you a electric blanket. There is no reason why I have to stay."

Forget looking like someone had kicked his puppy – he looked as if he _were_ the puppy, and she'd just booted him clear across the room. "Martha."

"No."

"Please?"

"No," she repeated – although it had to be said that she was slightly less firm this go round. "You smell like sick."

And of course, now the pout commenced in full force.

"Please?"

She could count the number of times she’d heard him say ‘please’ to her on one hand, which made the deployment of the plaintive little word – twice, no less – devastatingly effective. She tried to glower at him for another moment.

He pouted.

Martha groaned in frustration.

"Fine," she gritted out from between clenched teeth. "I'll stay." His eyes started to light up, and she held up a finger, stopping him short. "But I am going to stay _here_ ," she jabbed her finger at the mattress, "and you are going to stay _there_."

The Doctor's gaze fell to the space between them – and his brows instantly furrowed, as if it were an entire canyon instead of ten centimetres. "But…" His nose scrunched in confusion. "How are we going to cuddle?"

She blushed furiously. "We're _not_ cuddling. What's gotten into you?"

"A deep and relentless chill,” he whinged.

"Stop being dramatic. Stay over there."

"But Martha,” arrived the inevitable protest.

"That's it," she interrupted. "Either you agree to that, or I'm headed to the library."

He attempted to pout her into submission for another few seconds – but once he saw that she was not going to be moved on her compromise, he sighed and resignedly pulled the duvet up higher, covering his nose and mouth. "Fine."

"You're going to stay over there?" she checked.

"Yes," he grumbled, like a chastised child.

"All right, then."

Silence settled between them as she fell back and folded her arms tightly, staring up at his ceiling. She was still in just her oversized t-shirt and sleep shorts – shorts which, now that she thought about it, exposed a lot more leg than she was actually comfortable with him seeing, especially in his bed. However, he'd kick up another fuss if she tried to go back to her bedroom for a pair of trousers, so she settled for pulling up a bit of the duvet he wasn't using and covering herself from the waist down.

"Are you cold?" he asked, sniffling.

"No," she said, feeling her cheeks warm up. "I'm fine."

A pause. "Here you go." He offered up the excess duvet that he was hoarding on his side. "I don't want you to be cold, too."

And if he'd stop being so infuriatingly sweet, then she could be properly irritated with him for guilting her into staying. "Thank you," she sighed. "But you need it more than I do."

"All right," he accepted simply, pulling the bedsheets back to his side and huddling into them.

Martha smiled reluctantly, and before she could trouble herself with all of the repercussions her actions might have, she reached out and ran her hand through his hair. By the time she saw him on most days it had been washed and had some sort of product in and was more or less an award-winning masterpiece. Right now, it was dishevelled and haphazard and delightfully fluffy from sleep. It was a good job the Daleks couldn’t see him like this – bed head made the Doctor seem infinitely less intimidating.

Her smile twitched as leant into her touch. The treatment was tolerated for nearly a minute before he finally commented.

"Martha?" His voice was drowsy and faraway. "Are you petting me?"

"Yes. Go to sleep."

"All right," he mumbled again.

It was less than two minutes later that his snuffling breathing evened out, and she finally withdrew her hand from his hair, watching his slack features. He looked younger when he was asleep. Not that she didn't already know that, all the times she'd (literally) stumbled upon him catnapping in their flat in 1969 – but it never ceased to amaze her, how sleep took the weight of nine-hundred years out of his features.

Sighing softly, she turned onto her side, facing away from him. She'd planned to sneak out right after he fell asleep, but…well, his bed really was quite comfortable. It was impossible to be sure whether it was the soft mattress or the pillows or even rhythmic rumble of his breathing lulling her, but something was doing the job and doing it well.

As her eyelids began to feel a bit heavy, she told herself she'd only rest for thirty minutes.

It was some four hours later that Martha came to with a violent start.


	2. Chapter 2

She inhaled sharply, trying to remember where she was and how she'd gotten there.

Then it came back to her and she slapped a hand over her eyes.

The distinct feverish warmth of a particular Time Lord was seeping through her pyjamas as he huddled against her. Despite her firm warnings, the Doctor had obviously gravitated towards her like a heat-seeking missile in his sleep – and now he was snuggled up to her back, one of his arms draped around her, snoring like an oncoming train in her ear.

So much for the no cuddling mandate.

Martha felt as if she should be very put out by this whole situation; but really, she'd be lying if she said it wasn't at least a little bit pleasant. If she ignored the sound of his heavy stuffy breathing and the lingering smell of vomit and the fact that he was burning up with fever – then this was just him holding her in his bed. And as the only holding the Doctor usually did was at arm's length, it wasn't as if she'd dare complain.

Even with the rumble of his congested snoring, she was oddly at peace. Martha found herself hoping that he'd stay asleep just a little longer so she could memorise the weight of his arm when it was slung over her hip, the solid feel of his chest rising and falling against her back, the tickle of his heavy breaths in her hair. She wanted to remember all of this in ten days' time when he was fully recovered (or, more likely, in five days' time when he was vehemently insisting that he was fully recovered).

But naturally, before she had time to commit any of these delightful things to memory, there was a gasp into awareness behind her.

"Martha?" the Doctor croaked out in a rush, voice breathless with panic. He instantly let go of her – no surprise there – and sat up hastily, with a sharp creak of mattress.

"Yeah?" Sighing, she twisted around to peer at him – and frowned. "What's wrong?"

The fevered flush in his face was rapidly draining away to an unhealthy paleness, and when he looked at her, his eyes were widened in alarm.

"I think it's the gravity again."

It was after an attempted sprint to the toilet, an ill-timed stumble, and one more usage of the whiffing alien cleaning fluid that the Doctor finally clambered back into his bed, moaning dolefully.

“Is vomiting a normal side effect of the Anderian flu?” Martha wondered in a mutter, as she binned the last of the soiled paper towels in the loo. “With normal flu – I mean, the Earth one – usually only children get sick like that.”

“For the _last_ time, I haven’t got the Anderian flu,” she heard his voice retort shakily from the bedroom. If she pressed the issue, he’d undoubtedly get worked up again and start in on his ‘ _I have super-duper Time Lord immunity to every single pathogen in the known universe and don’t you forget it_ ’ harangue: and so that was the end of that particular conversation. Heaving a very heavy sigh, she turned off the light in the bathroom and reluctantly returned to her post at his bedside.

He was squirming around as if struggling to get into a comfortable position. Martha observed wearily for a moment. The squirming only got worse, and he started tugging at the collar of his striped pyjamas.

She felt a headache coming on. "What is it now?"

"Hot," he complained. "Why's it so hot? Did you muck about with the thermostat?"

"That's just the fever, Doctor." She sat down next to him.

There was grumbling as he pointedly twisted away from her human warmth, irritably glancing over his shoulder as if his fever was somehow her fault.

She exhaled with practised patience. "Do you want that cup of water?"

He frowned, and hesitated. Apparently the vomiting had deeply unnerved him.

"The gravity has already turned on you twice," she reasoned. "It seems stable now. I think it'll be a while yet before it strikes again. So – water?"

"Fine," he huffed, tugging his collar again. His perspiration had progressed even further, and she reckoned his acquiescence had less to do with her reasoning and more to do with the fact that he was burning up. Instead of just the two patches under his arms he'd been sporting earlier, now there were now damp, dark parabolic sweat stains down his chest and his back. His fringe was sticking to his forehead and his dusting of freckles were all but erased by the fevered flush.

"Maybe you should take a cool shower," she suggested as she stood up. "That would make you feel better."

"Fine."

"I'll come back in twenty minutes, okay?"

"Fine," he sighed gloomily.

* * *

Compared to the rest of the ship, the TARDIS’s galley was uninspiring. It was just a simple kitchen – if one overlooked the atomic dishwasher and the exotic fruit dispenser and the bigger-on-the-inside cupboards, of course – and Martha took solace in the brief respite it provided from whinging, vomiting Time Lords.

Because she had forgone breakfast in favour of finding the Doctor earlier, her stomach – evidently taking its cues from the Time Lord – was grumbling its protests. The first thing she did with her allotted twenty minutes was have her normal tea and toast to appease it. Although it did feel a bit odd to be eating it without the Doctor gabbling about alien planets at her shoulder and urging her to chew faster.

She finished her meal, deposited her dishes in the washer, and then set about filling his usual tea mug with water. Though he had not asked for it, she also made the Doctor a piece of toast – and, to ensure that he actually ate it instead of shoving it aside, she slathered it in his favourite marmalade. It wouldn't be the best meal he'd ever eaten, but it'd keep his energy up.

Martha was hunting for a tray to put the food on when something appeared just out the corner of her eye.

Startled, she looked up from the cupboard she'd been rummaging in. On the countertop right in front of her sat a bottle of white tablets with a blue, child-proofed lid.

She straightened up and got to her feet, closely inspecting the bottle. The label was in swirling circles of Gallifreyan; she had no way of telling what it was. "Is this for him?" she wondered aloud, looking up to the ceiling.

There was no reply, no indication that the sentient ship had even put the bottle there. She frowned. "Is it…what, an antiemetic? Something for his fever? A cure for the Anderian flu?"

Nothing.

"Well, thanks for the help," Martha muttered, feeling a bit silly as she looked back down to the bottle. If it was indeed for him, the Doctor would never agree to read the label for her; and if she didn't know what it was, there was no way she was going to try to give it to him.

Sighing, she set down the bottle and returned to her search for a tray. It took a minute or two, but she finally located one; a basic grey plastic platter, large enough for her purposes. She set it down on the floor beside her, closed the cupboard, then looked back to the tray.

The bottle of tablets sat innocently in the middle, staring up at her.

"Okay, so you want me to have this, then?" She grabbed the bottle and the tray and put both on the countertop. "Is it something for the Doctor?" The question was met with silence. "Okay. So it's _not_ for the Doctor."

The light in the kitchen blinked on and off.

"Not for the Doctor, then," she surmised. "So…" She scrunched her nose and thought for a moment. "Is it for me?"

Once again, the light blinked.

"But I'm not sick," she pointed out. "Unless…is this to keep me from getting sick?" No reply. "Wait – _am_ I sick? Did he give me the flu?"

A low, droning hum emanated from the TARDIS – a sound she'd heard a million times in various parts of the ship and thought nothing of. Now, however, it seemed oddly apologetic.

"I should've known," she sighed. The faucet over the sink switched itself on and off in agreement. Martha looked down at the bottle of pills; then a thought struck her. "Hang on. This is from Gallifrey, isn't it?"

The sink gurgled in confirmation.

"Well, I can't take _this_ ," she protested. "It's just a flu. What if this is the only bottle he has left? It's not like he can go back and stock up."

Another hum of the TARDIS – one which, though she swore it was the same as the other, sounded distinctly irritated.

"I can't," Martha insisted. "Especially not without telling him first. It's theft. No, forget that, it’s _worse_ than theft."

An electric current very suddenly jumped up from the bottle in her hand and bit at her palm. She gasped at the sting, dropping it. "Hey!"

The bottle landed right-side up in a way that didn't half defy physics, resting at her feet.

"I'm not taking it," she growled. "And that _hurt_."

Suddenly the bottle was gone. The TARDIS must have finally relented, she thought. Tutting in disapproval as she rubbed the tingling out of her hand, she put the Doctor's toast and water on the tray before leaving the galley and retracing her steps through the corridors, back to his bedroom.

Because of her unexpected encounter with the TARDIS, she had been gone for nearly thirty minutes instead of twenty, but she still knocked on the door in case he wasn't decent, balancing the tray against her hip. "Doctor?" she called. "Can I come in?"

"Yes," he replied from inside, still sounding immensely sullen. She figured the shower hadn't gone over as well as she'd hoped it would. 

She pressed the door panel. When it slid open, she was surprised to find that the lights in his bedroom had glowed to life in the time she'd been gone. Moving into the room, she set the tray down at the foot of his bed. For a moment she almost mused that this was oddly similar to bringing John Smith his breakfast, her morning routine in 1913.

Then she looked up.

"Doctor!" she yelped.

"Hmm?"

Martha's mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a few moments as she gaped. And then she finally managed to cobble together some semblance of a coherent thought, and squeaked, "Where are your clothes?"

He pointed to a spot on the floor. "Down there," he sniffed.

She forced her wide eyes away from him to stare at his striped pyjamas, and what looked like one of his red undershirts and his blue pinstriped trousers – all heaped on the carpet. It was as if he had tried to get dressed but abandoned the effort halfway through.

She floundered for a second as her brain struggled to piece the images together. "Why?"

"I'm hot," he complained, as if that was all the explanation required.

Until fifteen odd seconds ago, the most skin she'd ever seen on the Doctor was on the rare occasion he deigned to take off his jacket and roll up his shirtsleeves. He was always buttoned up, tucked in, thoroughly hidden behind careful barriers of wool and cotton; so much so to the point that she sometimes forgot there even _was_ skin underneath all those tight suits.

And so naturally, the sight of him sprawled on his bed, stripped down to nothing but his pants, was somewhat of a shock to the system.

For a wonderful, horrible moment she'd thought he was starkers – but then she caught sight of his shorts and, gradually remembering how to breathe, she tore her eyes away from his body. He only had flu; he wasn't blind. And she couldn't very well eye him up while he was looking right at her.

With herculean self-restraint, Martha dragged her attention off of the six feet of pale Time Lord before her and instead focussed on the tray, reaching for the water. "Well," she cleared her throat uncomfortably, banishing the residual squeakiness from her voice and making an effort not to stammer, "I've got something for you to drink."

The Doctor managed to wriggle himself into a partially upright position, accepting the proffered mug. "Thanks." He took a tentative sip of the water, and gave a telling wince as soon as it hit his sore throat.

She perched on the edge of the bed, feeling rather unsure of herself. It was very easy to fuss over him when he was in sweaty pyjamas and reeked of sick. Bare skin and that warm, clean, freshly-showered aroma made things rather more…challenging.

“So,” she said, angling for a normal tone and failing, the segue abrupt and painfully awkward. He didn’t seem to notice, too busy cringing into his mug. “Did the shower help any?”

He coughed on the final swallow, then handed the half-empty mug back to her and slouched into his pillows, duvet strewn over his knees as if he couldn't be bothered to kick it off all the way. "A bit,” he muttered. “Not enough. Still hot."

Flustered, she sat the mug back on the tray, hoping that he couldn’t see her blushing. "Well, at least you don't smell like sick anymore."

He scowled, and opened his mouth, predictably to tell her that Time Lords couldn't smell like sick – but then something else caught his attention. "What's that?"

His eyes were on the tray, and she turned around, prepared to hand him the toast and bribe him into eating it. Then she saw the bottle of tablets.

"It followed me," she stated incredulously.

"What?"

"The TARDIS," Martha sighed. "I think – well, I think she wanted me to take these."

"Why? What are they?"

She reached out and handed him the bottle. He took it in his left hand, using his right to prop himself up a bit more as he examined it. Then he frowned deeply, and slowly looked up at her. "You're…ill?"

“That's what your ship seems to think,” she replied, shrugging.

He was suddenly very pale, and Martha worried he was going to vomit again. But he didn't lean over the edge of his bed and sick up. Instead he asked, in an unusually timid voice: "Is it my fault?"

She rolled her eyes at the question, snorting a laugh. "I spent four hours breathing in all your disgusting germs, Doctor, of _course_ it's your fault. I'm not surprised. I _told_ you it was a bad idea."

He didn't seem to think it was comical in the slightest. "I'm sorry."

Martha waved off the apology. "It's fine. What is that stuff, anyway?"

"It's an antiviral." She was pinned by the concerned frown for another few seconds before his eyes finally dropped to the bottle. "Why didn't you take them?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't.”

“Why not?”

She gestured a bit awkwardly. “I mean…they're from your home," she said, cautious, not wanting to upset him with a mention of Gallifrey. "The label, it's in your language. I wasn't going to take them without asking, and since you can’t, uh…well, if there weren't any more _left_ ," she hedged, flinching at herself and realising she was bulldozing her way through what was supposed to be a sensitive explanation, "I didn't want to waste them. I've had the flu a million times. I don't need an antiviral. Definitely not _that_ antiviral, anyway."

The Doctor stared at her for a long moment.

After a few seconds Martha shrunk a little under the sudden intense scrutiny, fighting the urge to look away in embarrassment. She wondered if he was about to admonish her for the disgusting sentimentality, toss the bottle at her and return to his sick grumpy self – but he didn't. He just looked down to the bottle, and seemed to swallow with tremendous difficulty.

She blinked, bemused. If she didn't know better, she would have thought he was on the verge of tears.

Almost moving in slow motion, he unscrewed the cap on the medicine and shook out two of the tablets into his palm. When he extended his hand to her, Martha was hesitant. "Are you sure?" she asked, looking down at the innocuous white tablets. “I can take them?”

He could only nod, shaking his hand at her insistently.

Feeling that something very significant had just passed between them and she had completely missed it, Martha plucked the tablets out of his palm and stuck them in her mouth. They were a bit too large to swallow whole, so she bit down on a hunch, and it easily crumbled against her tongue. Chewing – and feeling very uneasy as he closely watched her swallow them – she smiled at him. "Thank you."

"Martha," he said, and even with his congestion, his voice was suspiciously thick. "Come here."

Immediately she was apprehensive. "Why?"

"Just, come here."

And the brown eyes were imploring her, so she tentatively scooted closer to him – only to be tugged into what had to be the fiercest hug he'd ever given her.

It was the flu, Martha thought. He'd finally gone round the bend.

"You know," she said, trying for levity, voice muffled against his decidedly exposed skin, "this is how I got ill in the first place."

But apparently he still didn't think the situation amusing, as he only held her tighter. She normally would have given his back an awkward pat, but his back was just as alarmingly naked as the rest of him, so she refrained. It was bad enough that her nose was trapped against the junction between freckled shoulder and neck, and with every inhale all she could smell was soap and feverish body heat.

And this was – well. ‘Nice’ probably wasn’t the right word.

"Doctor," she said gently. "You really don't need to beat yourself up. I mean, I'm a medical student. I knew I was most likely going to get flu, hanging around you. Remember? About cuddling rats?"

"Yeah," he sniffed. "Am I a rat?"

She was fully prepared to confirm this, but he seemed genuinely concerned by what her answer might be, so she drew back from the hug and pretended to inspect him. And perhaps _pretended_ was a bit of an exaggeration. Her eyes flicked from the wild damp hair to the bared chest to the unsettlingly snug pants. Martha had always assumed he was just sort of scrawny underneath his pinstriped ensemble – but a split second of observation made it clear that this was not at all the case.

"No," she said decisively, and cleared her throat. "You are _definitely_ not a rat."

Usually a coy compliment like that would inflate his ego to astronomical proportions, but as most of his recent history had been spent vomiting and sleeping, she supposed it was just the boost he needed. A ghost of a smile crossed his lips as he slowly leant back into her (evidently proximity was a thing they were doing, now). "Does that mean we can cuddle?"

"Don't you push your luck, mister."

"Okay."

And because she simply could not resist, because his drying hair was right there within touching distance, she risked running a hand through it to smooth down the more errant strands, eradicating the wet porcupine look. She was only planning on doing it once, honestly – but then he hummed low in his throat, and it seemed criminal to stop after that.

It occurred to Martha only a very short time later that his head was resting on her shoulder and that his breathing was exceptionally heavy. "Doctor?" she asked, taking her hand from his hair to frown down at him. "Are you falling asleep?"

"Hmm?" came his decidedly sleepy reply. "Huh? No."

"Good," she said. "Because you still haven't eaten your toast."

"Toast?" he echoed, and the distaste in his voice was palpable. "I don't want toast."

"Not even if it has your favourite marmalade on it?"

"Hmm." There was a moment of consideration. "No."

"Wow. You're going to go to sleep, then?"

"Hmm."

Martha figured his shower must have tired him. She'd already gotten him to drink something – she supposed eating could be held off until the next time he woke up. "All right," she said. "Well, you can't fall asleep here. I'm not going to be holding you up."

Nothing.

"Doctor, you need to move." He was silent. "Doctor?"

A soft snore was her only reply.


	3. Chapter 3

The four-poster bed was vacant.

This was Martha’s first and most alarmed thought upon coming into the Doctor’s room the next day.

The preceding several hours had been spent reading whilst he slept, and thwarting all his unconscious attempts to cuddle with her. Most of the evening had been quite serene – largely because he’d been too lethargic to get out of bed and cause trouble. Long hours had been filled with only congested snoring and the occasional inexplicable, sleepy murmur that Brian’s shoes fit perfectly (who Brian was, or why the Doctor had been wearing his shoes, remained unclear).

Then, upon being taken over by a yawn, she had retired to her own room for some rest. Which, following a shower and some more breakfast, put her where she was now: standing in an empty room that ought to be inhabited.

She had known that there would come a point when he would begin to reject the idea that he was ill. Or the idea that he had ever had the Anderian flu, or that they had visited Anderia in the first place, or that a planet called Anderia even existed. She'd known that he would claim to be healthy and try to infiltrate the console room to fly the TARDIS.

But she had not known that he was going to quite literally abandon ship on just the second day of his illness. Given how exhausted he’d seemed, Martha had thought he'd endure at least three or four days of enforced bedrest before he tried to leave. Yet not even forty-eight whole hours had passed before he'd tried to abscond without her knowledge. She had underestimated his capacity for bad decisions. For a moment she entertained the idea that maybe he’d merely gotten better much more quickly than expected – but she knew that was wishful thinking.

A quick inspection of his room revealed that his clothes were missing from the floor, so he hadn’t innocently gone wandering around in his pants in search of her. He was fully dressed. The grey platter that once held toast was now bare, only a few incriminating crumbs left as evidence of its demise. She checked under his bed for the shoes she'd absently noticed yesterday while cleaning the carpet, and sighed when she saw that one of his pairs of trainers – the red ones – were absent. That solidified her hunch.

He was planning a trip.

* * *

When Martha entered into the console room, her pyjamas swapped for jeans and a blue vest top, she looked for all the world like she was fully prepared for a day of exhilarating thrills, running, and intergalactic troubleshooting.

Reality was a touch less exciting, as all her day would actually consist of was wringing the neck of a particular daft alien.

A daft alien who, once she'd laid eyes on him, didn't even look like he should even be vertical, let alone manning the helm of a time machine.

The Doctor was standing at the console, chest heaving as he struggled to recover from what had been – based on what she'd heard in the corridor – an incredibly violent fit of sneezing. His suit looked even more rumpled than it traditionally did, red tie hanging limp from his neck. The wonderful, artfully messy hair was flat and listless. Sweat shone on his upper lip. Worse, his eyes were even redder now: the bags under them pronounced and puffy as he poked at the keyboard on the console, staring blankly at the monitor and sniffling every few moments.

"What are you doing?"

She knew he was well and truly out of it when it took him several moments to register her presence. His gaze jumped up and he had to blink twice before recognition sparked. Then his expression went vaguely guilty, and he quickly straightened his posture, attempting to make himself to look less dependent on the console, with marginal success.

"I'm looking at the monitor," he replied in a sniff, adopting a defensive tone at once. "I'm fine."

Shouting at him was generally never the way to achieve things, so she calmly crossed to the other side of the console and stood next to him. “What’s on the monitor?”

He pointed at a blinking light. "That.”

"What's that?"

"That's where I'm going."

"Right," she said, squinting at the tiny circle and nodding. "So, what did they do to you?"

A confused pause. "They've not done anything."

"Well, you clearly think it's a good idea to spread your germs there. And maybe even introduce the Anderian flu to a foreign environment. So they must have done something."

This was all it took to get him going.

"I do _not_ have the Anderian flu," he said forcefully, in a way that would have been quite intimidating had his voice not been so thickly, hilariously congested.

"We've been through this already, Doctor," she sighed. "If you're not sick, then why do I somehow vividly remember you vomiting all over your carpet yesterday?"

Had he not already been flushed from fever, she got the distinct impression that she would have seen him blush faintly. "I told you about the gravity," he mumbled, tugging at his ear.

This go-round, Martha had no patience for his ridiculousness. "Oh, so has the gravity given you lethargy as well? And a fever? And chills? And, apparently, the right to go spreading the Anderian flu about the cosmos?"

"I will not spread flu. I am not contagious. And in the last few hours, I have slept for longer than I have in years. Any illness that I may…" she cleared her throat pointedly, making him narrow his eyes, "…or may _not_ have picked up is long gone from my system.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes! I mean,” he flapped a hand at himself, “look at me. Do I look ill to you?"

She looked at him. He was still gripping the console, trying and failing to mask his shivers, his face pale and drawn, dark spots of sweat beginning to peek through his jacket in unfortunate half-moons.

"You are a vision of health," she said.

He scowled, for once taking note of the dripping sarcasm. "Listen, Martha. I don't want to argue with you, and I appreciate what you've done, but I am not going to stay cooped up in here in the TARDIS for _ten days._ Anything could be happening out there. Entire planets are being annihilated as we speak."

She rolled her eyes at the predictable histrionics. She'd known he was going to try to use some variation of the classic 'the universe is in peril' line to convince her – and she wasn't fooled. Martha put her hands on her hips. "You told me that there was no real time in the Vortex, Doctor. It's like being in stasis, you said. Didn't you?"

"I s'pose," he sighed. "I mean, that’s ridiculous simplification and it's not actually anything like that, at all, but if it helps you visualise…sure."

"So if we're in stasis," she reasoned, "then nothing is happening that you're missing. No one is being annihilated. And you can be cooped up for as long as need be."

The Doctor opened his mouth to disagree with her, to highlight all of the blindingly obvious, disappointing ways her logic was flawed, and probably to lecture her on how disrespectful it was to try to explain the dynamics of the Time Vortex to a Time Lord.

But then he seemed to realise that she was actually right.

He faltered for a moment, before his expression gave way to a glare. "Stop…stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"There may not be any alien invasions or universe-altering catastrophes to neutralise at the moment,” he said firmly, “but there is absolutely _no_ reason I have to stay in the TARDIS."

She raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at how he was barely holding himself up on the console. "Isn't there?"

The glare reached an Oncoming Storm calibre, and was decidedly more effective than his last attempt; but even so, it was still rather difficult to be intimidated when he was shivering. "No," he growled.

"Doctor," she began, trying to be reasonable, realising that arguing with him had not been the best approach to take. "Forget spreading the flu, forget being sick. I'm worried about _you._ What happens if we're running for our lives – because we always do – and you, I dunno, faint or something?"

But this was evidently the wrong thing to say, as he finally let go of the console, indignantly turning to face her, looking tremendously affronted. "I am not going to _faint_. Have I ever fainted before?" he demanded.

"Yes, that time the lizard king of Gamca 6 tried to make you eat a spider during your knighting ceremony. Went out like a light."

" _That_ was different," he snarled.

"You shouldn't leave the TARDIS," she said. "You _know_ you shouldn't leave the TARDIS. I don't have to tell you this."

"No, you don't." His jaw was set. "Because no matter how many times you say it, I am not going to change my mind. I have lived through plagues, Martha. A primitive virus that I don't even have is not going to keep me inside of my own time machine."

Martha knew then that she was not going to persuade him. Now it was no longer just leaving the TARDIS – now it was a point of pride for him to prove to her that he could leave the TARDIS without any complications while he was sick. She resigned herself to the fact that it was time to take the path of least resistance. Wherever they went, he'd tire himself out in a few short hours. Then, when disaster inevitably struck, and he was back in bed, feeling terrible, shucking off his clothes and hiding in the duvet: that was when she'd give him the telling-off he deserved.

"All right." She shrugged and folded her arms. "Fair enough."

Clearly, he had been expecting her to continue arguing. Already having his retort lined up, he opened his mouth to deliver it. Then he blinked, puzzled, realising what she'd said. "Fair enough?" he repeated. "What do you mean, fair enough?"

"I mean, fair enough." She gestured to the console. "Go on."

He glanced at her sideways, looking very much like a suspicious hedgehog. Then he put one tentative hand on the controls. "I am leaving the TARDIS," he stated slowly.

"I know. You've said. Where are we going?"

His eyebrows furrowed. "We? _We_? You're coming with me?"

"I can't very well let you go by yourself," she pointed out sensibly. "You'll get into all sorts of trouble, and then won’t be able to get yourself out."

"You're not going to try to stop me?"

Martha gave him a look. "How do you suppose I'd do that, then, Doctor? Rugby tackle you?"

He seemed considerably alarmed by the suggestion, and reached out quickly, grabbing the edge of the console as if to brace himself.

She sighed deeply. "I'm kidding. You're not going to listen to me, so there's no point in me wasting time trying to stop you. I'll come with you, so long as you promise me that you're not still contagious."

"I'm not contagious." There was sincerity in his eyes. "Haven't been for twelve hours. Honest."

"Okay then," she accepted.

"I'm a Time Lord," he added helpfully. "Superior cells."

"Yes, I think you may have _possibly_ mentioned that once or twice." She shook her head in exasperation, then pointed her finger at the little circle of Gallifreyan on the monitor. "Where are we going?"

He still seemed a bit cautious – glancing at her warily every few seconds as if to be sure she was not going to follow through on her suggestion of a form tackle – but he eventually divulged that there was an event called the Starlight Festival taking place. Apparently, like Kur-ha, he had been meaning to show her this as well. He explained that the festival was held once every century, on the thirty-sixth moon of a planet called Khaldor; and that he was positive she would love it.

“Why’s it called the Starlight Festival?” she wanted to know.

“It’s positioned almost perfectly in the middle of one of the most populated galaxies in the universe. Welllll, I say almost perfectly. Bit to the left, actually, but the effect is the same. Once every hundred of your Earth years it completes a revolution around Khaldor,” he swirled his finger to demonstrate this, “and right above the planet, you can see an entire sky full of stars from its surface. Gives the best visibility in all creation for twenty whole minutes, so long as the clouds cooperate. Celestial phenomenon. The whole point of the festival. Mere coincidence, but I’ve heard it’s quite a sight to see.”

This endurance ramble gave Martha minimal hope, as he did it without sneezing, and aside from the nasality it sounded quite like his normal mile-a-minute babbles. “Haven’t you seen it before?”

“No. I haven’t gotten around to seeing _every_ wonder of the universe yet. There are seven…”

“Wait, really?”

“…hundred billion or so to work through.” He smiled faintly at her. “And I slept most of yesterday, so my schedule’s a bit backlogged.”

“Well, might as well take something off the list. Do I need a suit?”

He stared blankly at her, then looked down at himself, visibly confused, putting a self-conscious hand to one blue pinstriped lapel. “Do you want one?”

“Doctor, a _spacesuit_.”

“Oh. Oh, no. The moon has its own artificial atmosphere, should be fine.”

“Okay.”

“Right.” He nodded, and looked at the console for a moment as if unsure what to do. Then he reached over and pulled the handbrake with none of his usual enthusiasm. “Right,” he repeated. “Good. Brilliant. Off we go, then.”

The spaceship wheezed.

She watched in mixed pity and concern as he piloted the TARDIS – although ‘piloting’ was definitely a generous description of what she was currently watching unfold. Instead of bounding around the controls as he was wont, right now he was struggling to maintain even an unsteady trot. Whenever he didn’t reach a lever in the appropriate time, the floor jerked violently and the TARDIS groaned a protest.

Martha clung to the railing and pretended not to notice.

By the time the room was done shaking, the Doctor was seven different oscillating hues of green. She looked around for a bin or some other receptacle – but luckily, there was no more sick to contend with. He took several deep breaths, eyes pinched shut, hands on his knees.

Then, once his composure was relatively recovered, he retrieved his coat from where it was slung over its normal coral strut like nothing was amiss.

"You okay?" she checked, trailing after him.

“Fine.” He shrugged his coat on, then offered her his too-warm hand with a cursory wiggle of his fingers.

She sighed, and accepted.

The doors to the TARDIS creaked open and a blast of cold air swirled in. Martha shivered immediately, startled, the icy breeze cutting into her bare arms. “You didn’t say there’d be snow.”

“There will be snow,” he said absently, and pulled her out the door.

The rudeness, she noted, was evidently still completely intact. She narrowed her eyes at his profile, then pressed into his side as much as she dared to shield herself from the biting wind. The sky was bright and pale above – and quite strange, with thirty-five other moons vaguely visible, along with the massive crest of a dark, luminously blue planet. The air felt bracing and crisp in her lungs, carrying the scent of frozen woodland. Glistening white crunched under Martha’s boots as she trudged alongside the Doctor.

“I don’t see a festival,” she noted after a moment through chattering teeth, silently revelling in the unnatural heat radiating from his body as they walked through the sloped snow, navigating rocks and icicle-adorned trees.

“It gets rather crowded, so I parked out the way.” He pointed, and she followed the path of his finger. At the bottom of the hill rested a sleepy little town, glowing orange in the grey fog. Whiffs of music floated up from the town and, even if she did fully disapprove of this trip, the festivities did look quite inviting, if faraway.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“Hmm,” he agreed. “Hopefully we’ll run into some trouble soon.”

She gave him a severe look and stopped dead in her tracks.

“No, Martha,” he sighed to the question she had yet to ask, “I haven’t purposefully landed somewhere dangerous just to orchestrate a crisis.”

“You’d better not have.”

“Come on, does that sound like something I’d do?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“All right, _maybe_. But not now. This is the Starlight Festival, I promise. Just boring and…visually pleasing. Shiny. There’s a party. That’s it. Really.”

“Good,” she said, and continued walking.

“Better than the TARDIS, though, don’t you think?”

She snorted. "I think the TARDIS would jettison you out an airlock if she heard you say that."

"Oh, I'd like to see her try," he muttered darkly. At Martha's curious glance, he sighed. "The TARDIS…mutinied, earlier."

She frowned. "Mutinied? Are you two rowing?” The Doctor often got into quarrels with his ship that Martha always seemed to find herself refereeing, and sometimes she felt a bit like an overwrought marriage counsellor. "Again?" she added, making her disapproval clear.

"She trapped me in my room and deadlocked the door this morning. My own ship. I save her from being decommissioned, spend seven-hundred years keeping her maintained. That's the thanks I get."

"She didn't want you to leave either," she pointed out. "She was just trying to keep you safe."

"She was trying to imprison me. One day –"

His nose twitched, his eyes widened a bit, then he gasped and sneezed loudly. There was a delayed and ineffective attempt to angle the sneeze into his arm.

“Doctor!” Martha complained, jerking away. It was far too late, as her face had already been sprayed. She wiped it with the sleeve of his jacket, scrunching her face in distaste. “That is _disgusting_. I’ve told you to cover your mouth. Make a habit of sneezing on _all_ your companions, do you?”

“One day,” he sniffled, fishing a blue handkerchief out of his pocket, “I’m going to sell her for scrap.”

“Who? Me or the TARDIS?”

A hint of a smile crossed his lips as he dabbed at his nose, surprisingly daintily for someone who’d just sneezed all over her. “Dunno, maybe both. Weighing the pros and cons. Mostly the pros. Haven’t decided yet.”

“Well, I’d like to see _you_ try, with either of us.” His smile twitched at this. “But really, you should leave her alone, you know. The TARDIS only ever wants to help you, from what I’ve seen."

"She’s a transdimensional meddler. Why do you always take her side, anyway?"

"I don't take sides, Doctor, I see reason."

He rolled his eyes, grumbling something she didn't fully catch about women teaming up against him.

She stared at him. "What was that?"

"Nothing," he replied, a bit too quickly for her tastes. “The town’s only a mile off now.”

Martha lifted her hand to swat his shoulder - but suddenly his shoulder was no longer beside her.

The Doctor was gone.

His left Converse had disappeared into the snowy earth beside a tree, and then his entire left side followed as his leg went plunging straight through the ground. He released her hand in favour of yelping in shock and making a hasty grab at a low-hanging tree branch.

Had he been healthy, he probably would have pulled himself up with ease and an irritated expression, then given the loose snow a stern talking-to about swallowing pedestrians. However – try as he might to convince her otherwise – he was not healthy. And the Anderian flu had greatly sapped his strength.

In the space of a second, he lost his grip on the icy, slippery branch. It snapped backwards and whacked him unhelpfully in the centre of his forehead. Snow rushed up his sides and clamped around his waist as his arms wind-milled helplessly. “Martha?” he squeaked, voice gone high and very unmanly.

Heart lurching in fear, she dropped to her knees at once, frantically trying to take hold of his sinking arm; but she was a moment too late.

He vanished into the snow without a trace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter long before covid 19 even existed, but just because I've read it back over and some bits of dialogue hit a little different now...I feel the need to stress that the Doctor isn't lying about not being contagious here. Also sneezing on people is bioterrorism and the Doctor only gets a pass because he's not human. Just a PSA lol


End file.
